Season ?: The Station of DoooOOOOooom
by Escadia
Summary: Season ? Episode 1: The Doctor is alone again, and the TARDIS decided to drag him on an adventure. Along the way, he meets someone he never expected to see again. And kinda dies, but that never stops him.
1. The Station

_**Updated Note: This chapter contains some pretty major spoilers for Season 6, so if you haven't seen it, you might want to hold off.**_

**Author's Note: Well, as anyone who saw the latest episode today, 4/23, can agree, the new seasons is adding some new things to cannon. I expected as much, cannon tends to do that. Though I know my story is going to eventually veer off into Alternate Universe territory, I'm going to try and keep it in cannon for as long as possible. That being said, I'm going to wait till the summer break to update parts of this to match current cannon. No point in doing it early because things might change even more.**

The Doctor was leaning against the railing, staring blankly at the TARDIS's time column. The column itself wasn't doing any more than its master, since TARDIS was parked, for lack of a better word, next to a rather impressive and expansive nebula, and indeed had been for some time.

The Doctor was lost in thought. He was alone again. It made sense, of course. His companions were, after all, only human. Well, usually. The point was, though they were all so eager to see the wonders of space and time, afterwards, for some reason or another, they left. Sometimes they didn't want to, but other times they did. Pond had been married for a while now, yet she and Rory had continued to travel with him. But even she had walked away.

The Doctor hadn't argued. In fact, though their travels had been enjoyable, what, with all the running, they had been awkward of late. Rory, for instance, was a point of friction. The Doctor, much in spite of himself, had genuinely liked the rather unassuming young man, but there had always been a level of rivalry there. The Doctor had no real interest in Pond. Sure, she was pretty, if young, and sharp witted, but the Doctor had walked down that road with a companion before. He knew that it would work no better a second time around.

Rory had apparently missed that memo, however. As had Pond. It was all innocent, of course, but it was still there, slowly wearing them down. It was the small things, mostly, but there larger problems, like the incident on Rephis 7. He had taken them there as one of the dozen or so places on their honeymoon, but it had quickly gone a very different direction.

It hadn't stopped the pain, though. Of course, all the lip service was paid, "See you soon," "Keep in contact," and etc. But that meant nothing. The Doctor knew that once they walked out that door, they'd be gone forever. It was heart breaking in its own way.

Every time one of his companions left, the Doctor swore off any more. It was too much pain, he told himself. It was better to travel alone. He was fine on his own… After a while, all those words seemed like empty platitudes. The loneliness was oppressive, and though he'd always have the TARDIS, she was very poor at holding up her end of the conversation.

In all honesty, the Doctor had to admit it was the conversations he missed. Sure, humans were ignorant, despite all their potential. He had to talk as fast as he could, simply so that he could give them some background information for the conversation itself. But still, they were someone to talk too. Part of him wished for once to have a conversation with someone who understood things on the same level he did. But there was no one.

Except maybe River. One could argue that she would be the best choice for a companion. They had a relationship, after all, though he still wasn't sure about the particulars. And it would be easier to find out now that her parents weren't around, since there was little out there as uncomfortable as pursing a relationship in front of someone Mum and Dad. But he knew that River lived her life mostly opposite than his, and besides, she still played so much close to the chest. It wasn't as if he didn't do the same, but it rankled him the wrong way when she did. Even if she was the closest thing out there to another Ti-

The sudden lurch of the TARDIS almost threw him off his feet. Immediately, the time column began to move, up and down, and the ship shook. The Doctor, with some difficulty, managed to regain his balance and he grabbed the control panel. He was, unfortunately, at the wrong end to have idea where exactly they were going.

Just as quickly as it had started, the TARDIS let out it whoosh and came to a stop. The Doctor held onto the panel for a second then straightened.

"I really wish you'd warn me before doing that," he told the ship irritably, adjusting his bowtie.

The TARDIS, as always, said nothing.

The TARDIS had landed in a landing bay. The Doctor felt a momentary surge of disappointment. It was a very clichéd place, after all. Why couldn't the TARDIS have more imagination? If she was going to insist on dragging him along on these unscheduled side trips, could she at least put some effort in making them more interesting?

There were other ships here as well, dozens in fact. Most were small, but there was a particularly large freight off in the distance, as well as several decent sized passenger transports.

The Doctor frowned. Something was wrong. He had obviously stepped into the primary landing queue for a space station, if the spotty looking force field holding back the stars and making up a forth wall to the room was any indication. A good sized station, too.

But it was quiet. More than quiet, it was dead. There was no life anywhere to be seen, not even small scavengers. And the ships were mismatched. Some looked brand new, others, while old, were being kept in superb shape. But others still were falling apart from age. It didn't make any sense. Why were the old ships still here? Stations like these were notorious for cannibalizing whatever they thought they could get away with. Usually they were chopped up and sold off before the metal had even begun to pit. Yet here they lay, untouched.

Something was very wrong here.

The feeling continued to grow as the Doctor left the bay. The halls weren't deserted, they were abandoned. He paused, laying one hand against a window. They confirmed what his feet felt, the low hum of power. The station was active.

So where was everyone?

The Doctor paused in a large room that, judging from the folded up counters and scattered tables, had once been a market. Or a giant mess hall. One of the two. Didn't matter, really. It was a giant room designed for people to meet up. And it was empty.

No, not just empty. This room was different from the hallways earlier. They were abandoned; this room was trashed. There were splinters of tables in the corner. Well, not actually splinters, since the tables were made of a plastic-metal composite, but close enough. There were scars and burns on the walls, and bullet holes. It was easy to see some were fresher than others. Several of the folded counters had dents in them. One looked like only age and rust was keeping in place, its hinges and latch long since beaten off.

There was a scrapping noise directly above him.

Before the Doctor had a chance to look up, the door at the far side of the room shot open.

"W'at the 'ell ya waiting for?" a young man barked. "Run!"

The Doctor never really was all that good at taking orders. It was part of the reason why he had to leave Gallifrey. However, there were orders and then there was really good advice. This was the later.

He dashed across the room, tripping momentarily over broken table. He heard the groan of machinery behind him. The young man leveled a rifle and opened fire in short bursts. Head down, the Doctor ran through the doorway. The young man pulled back and the door snapped shut. Not even a moment later, there was a screech of metal on metal.

Then silence. After a beat, the sound of machinery drifted away.

"Well," the Doctor said, running his hand through his hair, "that was certainly invigorating."

"Invigorating?" the young man near spat. "Ya daft or somet'em?

"Daft? No. Well, maybe." The Doctor glanced around. They were in another hallway. Besides the young man, there was an older woman standing next to a set of controls and a young girl sitting on the ground, clutching a display of some sort.

The older woman chuckled and looked up from the controls. "Ta come 'ere, 'e 'ave ta be." She extended a hand. "I'm Marla. T'at's my son, Georgie, and 'ere my granddaughter, Susie."

He took her hand lightly. "I'm the Doctor," he said with a grin.

"We saw ya walking t'rough the 'alls and got down 'ere as soon as we could," Marla explained. "Usually we try ta warn people away from the station if we can, but we missed ya ship on the incoming. Course, once ya 'ere, the station does its best to make sure ya stay."

"Sounded like it," he agreed.

Marla nodded up the corridor. "We've got a safe room. Safest place t'ere is, least for now."

As they started walked, the Doctor fell in step with Marla. "So, what can you tell me about this station?"

"It's evil," she said simply. "I've been 'ere damn near ten years now, but that was the first thing I learned about it. Looks all nice and pretty from t'e outside, but once you land, ya not leaving." She snorted. "Course, I could see that as soon as we set down. Tried ta tell Gerald t'at, but 'e keep go on about needing fuel. I told 'im that we could make it ta the next station, but 'e wouldn't 'ear it." She glowered bitterly. "Stupid old man."

"Gerald. Is that your husband?"

She nodded. "'E died 'bout t'ree years back. Station finally got t'e better of 'im."

"Yes." He paused a second. "What exactly got the better of him? In this station, I mean."

Marla sniffed. "One of t'e saws. We were making a supply run, and 'e got distracted. Always bloody doing t'at, getting distracted. I suppose it was cause 'e was a dreamer, going on 'bout t'e future. Going on 'bout 'ow we were gonna get free of t'is place. But t'en, of all t'e bloody times." She sighed. "I suppose t'at if 'e wasn't like t'at, I'd never 'ad fallen for the fool."

"Saws?"

She glanced at him. "Didnit get a close look, did ya. Probably for t'e best, no point in gawking if ya just gonna get ya self killed. Saws, giant bloody saws, on t'ose damn tentacles. Other ones, ta. Flamethrowers, blasters, spike t'rowers, the like. T'ey're everywhere."

"Ah." He stared ahead for a second. "Why?"

"Why?"

"Yes, why? Why are there giant saws, flamethrowers, blasters, spike throwers, and the like, on tentacles?"

She snorted. "W'y else. Ta kill us so t'at bastard can get his jollies." She glanced at him again. "Ya must be far from 'ome. Most people, even if t'ey lack the smarts to stay away from t'is place, at least know the story."

"Yes, very far from home. Don't really have one, actually."

"One of t'ose? Traveling t'e galaxy cause it just ta much fun and won't settle down cause t'at'd be much ta boring."

"For the most part."

Marla grinned. "Ta be honest, I always wanted ta be one of t'em." They paused at a door. She fiddled with the controls for a second, cursing softly. The door snapped open.

The room wasn't anywhere as large as the market had been, but it was large enough. Barely. It was crammed full of everything. In one corner there were several blankets and bedding haphazardly shoved to one side. In another, a table was pushed up against a small chemical stove. The corner directly left from the entrance was loaded down with guns and cans of food. The farthest corner was blocked with several sheets, but judging from the smell, it was a latrine.

Sitting at the table was another young man who made the Doctor extremely nervous. He was cleaning a gun, which was bad enough in its own right, but there was a certain twitchiness to his movement that screamed warnings to the Time Lord. There was also a young woman at the stove, preparing what seemed like a daily ration. She had an almost dazed look in her eyes and she was missing her right arm below the elbow.

The girl bounded ahead, pausing to carefully place the display on the table, before going over and tugging on the woman's shirt. The woman looked down, almost puzzled for a moment, before putting the spoon down and placing her one hand around the girl's shoulders.

"'Ome, sweet, 'ome," Marla said laconically. "Not much, but it keeps us safe."

"Yes," the Doctor agreed, trying to ignore the smell of the latrine as he looked around. It felt like something was screaming at him, telling him he was missing something. Of course, the little screaming voice never told him what exactly he was missing, so it did nothing but frustrate him.

"T'is is my daughter-in-law, Luanne and 'er brother Charles. T'ere's three more out trying ta raid supplies from t'at bastard."

"So there're eight of you."

Marla nodded. "Nine, now. We've 'ad as many as fifteen, but not for a while. Most know ta keep t'eir distance from this place. Ta be 'onest, we're a bit surprised to 'ave two new people."

"Oh? There's someone else too?"

She nodded again. "Arrived no more t'an a week before ya."

"Pretty little thing," Georgie spoke up. "Shoots a gun like nobody's business, once we got 'er ta pick one up. She kept saying t'at she didnit wanna kill anyone, t'at t'ere was 'nother way. We 'ad to point out we're fighting machines and t'at t'ey weren't alive." He snorted. "Still seemed 'esitant. Mentioned something 'bout 'er father 'ating them."

"Sounds like a smart man," the Doctor murmured. He looked back at Luanne and Charles. What was it about those two that he should realize?

The display on the table beeped. The little girl pulled away from her mother and hurried over to it. The Doctor moved forward. She sat down on the table's bench and began to play with the display. He took a seat next to her.

"You're name is Susie, right? Or Susan?"

The girl gave him a shy nod.

"It's a brilliant name," he assured her. "An absolutely wonderful one. I have a granddaughter named Susan myself." He paused. "I haven't seen her in a long time." He nodded to the display. "So, what does that show?"

"Everything," she said quietly.

"Everything," he said with an impressed nod. "Well, that's always useful. Anything in particular?"

"It beeps if it picks up a ship or any gunfire." She adjusted the display. "See?"

"Impressive." He stared at the screen. It was hazy and flickering, but he could see what looked like a room and muzzle flashes. "Here," he said, pulling out his sonic screwdriver, "this'll help." The screwdriver whined for a moment and the picture pulled into focus.

Immediately, the Doctor wished he hadn't. The muzzle flashes were gone and the screen was empty, save for two bodies lying on the ground. One was clearly cut down the middle. "Perhaps it was better the other way," he said quickly, the screwdriver whining again. The picture blurred till it was nearly indistinct. He turned back to Marla. "Exactly how far away are these supplies?"

"'Bout five 'undred meters," she said, nodded over her shoulder. "Why, it go bad again?"

The Doctor stood, flashing a small grin toward Susie. "Yes, apparently," he said, walking over to Marla.

"Damn, must 'ave change the times."

"Time?"

Marla sighed. "T'at bastard likes ta play with us. 'E gets regular supplies from somewhere and puts t'em all in that room. T'e room is guarded by a dozen tentacles, but t'ey are some sort of time table. For a s'ort while, only one or two are running, and it's pretty safe ta make a run for it. Problem is, the times change randomly, and just because it was safe yesterday didnit make it safe today."

The Doctor was frowning. "That doesn't make any sense." He looked around. "None of this makes any sense. This entire station doesn't make sense."

The door to the room opened suddenly. "Well, that didn't go well," the young blond woman said.

The Doctor blinked.

"Jenny?"

Jenny stared at the Doctor, frowning. She shifted the rifle she was holding into a more comfortable position. "Who are you?"


	2. The Map

The strange man was staring. Jenny shifted, a little uncomfortable. She'd never seen him before, yet he apparently had seen her, which led to a whole host of uncomfortable possibilities. A nagging feeling in the back of her mind didn't help either.

"Is it just ya?" Marla asked.

Jenny nodded. Marla cursed softly.

The man was still staring. He almost seemed at a loss for words. Finally, he managed to sputter, "But you're dead!"

Jenny, and everyone else in the room, just looked at him.

He adjusted some sort of bow thing around his neck. The military program still muttering in the back of her mind told her it served no purpose and, to be honest, it looked ridiculous.

"You died on Messaline," he said after a moment. "You didn't regenerate. How are you standing there?" He frowned. "I suppose you would have been in the first fifteen hours, but you wouldn't have any regeneration energy to heal you. Maybe the Source? It's designed to bring life but to a planet. The terraforming gasses shouldn't be able to cause anything on this scale in an organic being." His eyes narrowed. "So why are you alive?" he asked in a low voice.

Jenny shifted her gaze to Marla, who shrugged.

"Once again, who are you?"

"T'is is t'e Doctor," Marla supplied.

A small shiver ran through her. "No he's not."

"Actually, I am," the strange man said.

Jenny shook her head. "You are not my father," she said hotly.

And he wasn't, he couldn't be. Dad was taller, for one. His hair tended to go up, not off to one side. The man's chin was far too broad, his jaw too long. There was no way he was her father.

"I really am," he said. "I've just regenerated since then."

"Regenerated?" she shot back. "You keep going on and on about that. What does it mean?"

"When Time Lords get close to dying, they can regenerate, replacing every cell in their body." He took a step toward her. "So why didn't you?"

"Time Lord?" Marla asked sharply. "Ya mean like in t'e old stories?"

The man turned to her. "Yes."

Marla started at him for a moment then let out a bark of laughter. "Ya actually expect me ta believe that? Ya really are daft."

"Completely," Jenny agreed. "I know you're not because Dad said he was the last one."

"And I am," he looked back her. "Jenny, it really is me. Why don't you recognize me?"

She opened her mouth to retort again, when the door behind her snapped open again. She moved to one side to see Carlos hanging on the door frame, out of breath.

"Ya alive," Marla said with an enormous smile.

Carlos nodded and staggered inside. Jenny caught him as he started to fall, leaning him up against the wall, helping him slide to the floor slowly. "I thought you got caught by those things."

"Me too," he panted. Georgie fetched a canteen for him and he gulped it down.

"How'd you get away?" Jenny asked him.

He shook his head and swallowed. "I don't really know. Happened too fast."

"I thought you said only three of them went," the strange man said.

"T'ey did," Marla answered. "Jenny, Carlos, and Mitchell."

Jenny glanced back at the man. He was frowning again. "But there were two bodies." The man turned, grabbed the Susie's display off the table and pulled something out of his pocket. It emitted an eerily familiar whine and Jenny had to shake off the wave of déjà-vu. A closer look told her that though the sound was the same, the man's looked nothing like Dad's screwdriver.

The man was scowling at the display. "They're gone."

"W'at's gone?" Marla asked sharply.

"The bodies," he snapped. He leveled his screwdriver at the display. Jenny could see the light flicker again and again on his face as he changed views rapidly. "There were two bodies, but now they're gone."

"It's t'e station," Marla said with a sigh. "T'at bastard won't even leave us our dead."

"But why?" For a moment, he looked like he wanted to throw the display, but instead put it back on the table. He pointed at Carlos. "You should be dead, so why aren't you?"

"You've been asking that question a lot," Jenny snapped at him.

"Which makes it no less valid." The man started to pace. "There were three people, two bodies, yet two survivors." He shook his head and paused. He snatched up the display and started flipping the views again.

Jenny glanced back to Marla, who shook her head. She knew the older woman was still quite happy to have another body here, even if he had lost his mind. She turned her attention back to Carlos. He was slowly recovering, his body still shaking and twitching with adrenalin. But his breathing was slowing, which was good.

"That can't be all of it," the strange man said again. He was looking at Marla. "Do you have a map or something?"

"T'ere are a couple display out in t'e 'all."

"Good," he said and rushed out the door, the display in the crook of his arm.

"Wait!" Marla called after him.

"I'll go with 'im," Georgie said.

"Are you going to be okay?" Jenny asked Carlos softly.

He nodded.

She smiled. "Good." She stood up. "I'm going too," she called, following the two men out the door.

She tracked them down about fifty meters away. The man claiming to be her father was fiddling with a screen in the wall. For a moment, static rippled across it, before the picture suddenly popped into existence.

The man stared at it for a second then returned his gaze to the display that was still flicking through the views. He switched between the two rather rapidly; almost to the point Jenny couldn't understand how he was keep track of it all. Finally, he stopped, laying the display down and squinting at the map.

"The little girl, Susie," he looked at Georgie. "She's your daughter, right?" he asked in an offhand manor.

Georgie nodded.

The strange man returned to the map. "Susie told me that display shows everything. But it doesn't." He pulled out his screwdriver and started fiddling with the map's screen. After a moment, he snorted in disgust.

"What?" Jenny asked in exasperation.

"This map is corrupted. Parts of the data have been destroyed."

"How can you tell?"

"Because," he said, pointing to the map. "All the places on here are public or privately owned areas. A market, a department store, restaurants, flats, even a garden."

"So?"

"So?" The man gave her an annoyed look. "There isn't a space station in the universe that is like that. At least not a station that expects to last very long. Where is the control room or the engine room? Where are all the small little override stations for emergencies?"

"It's a public map," she said with a shrug. "They're probably hidden."

"You mean like a suppressed layer of information," he said. Again, a chill ran down her spine. "No, there isn't. I checked. Besides," he pointed to the map again, "these corridors here lead off into nothing. Why even bother showing them if the restricted area was hidden?" He shook his head. "The map is corrupted."

"Doctor," Georgie said, "are we done 'ere?"

"No," the man said irritably. "The display only shows what's on the map, so that means the map and the display are linked. And the map is corrupted. The fragmented data is too precise, too regular, to be from natural computer decay. Meaning that someone has purposely corrupted the data here and someone is controlling what we can see using the display."

"Doctor-"

"Shut up." He paused for a heartbeat. "The only reason to block our view of the restricted sections is because they don't want us to see what they're hiding. Obviously something that is controlling all the machine tentacles."

"Doctor, can we go?" Georgie asked.

The man ignored him. "Whoever and whatever they are, they most certainly don't want anyone here seeing them otherwise they wouldn't have bothered. Meaning that they'll have laid down their highest level of defenses to stop us. So to find them, we just have to charge in where the defenses are the strongest. Which will get us all killed," he added as an afterthought.

"Doctor, we really s'ould be getting back."

The strange man spun to face Georgie. "Why? What's so important?"

Georgie hesitated. "It's gonna be t'e night shift soon. It's too dangerous to be out 'ere."

"Why? The tentacles are concentrated in the large rooms."

"The sentinels," Jenny answered. "I haven't seen one yet, but I guess they prowl the halls."

"T'ey're giant bloody machines," Georgie explained. "'Bout t'ree meters tall. Usually a couple wanderen 'round duren t'e day shift, but t'ere about t'ree times t'at at night. Best ta find safety."

The man gave him an annoyed look then looked back to the map. "That sounds like a great idea, but finding out how to get out of here is a better one." Again he picked up the display.

Georgie looked at Jenny then back at the man. "Ya really t'ink you can find a way outta 'ere?"

"Of course I can."

Another minute slid past. Georgie was glancing nervously up and down the hall. Jenny was staring at the man, that nagging feeling tugging at the back of her mind. Part of her wanted to ignore it, but it was the same familiar feeling she had felt around her father, so the other part of her wanted to cling to it. Not that it mattered, there was no way this man could honestly think-

"Good," he said suddenly. "I have a plan." He turned back to the two of them. "I need to talk to Marla."

"Wait, what sort of plan?" Jenny asked as the man began to walk forward.

He grinned at her. "A very good one. Don't you trust me?"

Jenny and Georgie looked at each other. "No."

The man had a wounded look on his face. "Well, you should. I am very, very good at what I do."

"You know you're going the wrong way, right?" Jenny pointed out.

He stopped and spun around. "Yes," he said after a moment. "I was just testing."

"Uh-huh."

Back in the room, Luanne had dished out what Jenny could only describe as soldiers rations. Not that she had ever really had any, since Dad had ended the war before her stomach had really had the chance to rumble for the first time. She had left right after that, and the first meal she had was dry food dispensed from the shuttles emergency rations. She had rather sternly chastised herself forgetting to grab food in her excitement to start following in his footsteps.

Marla quickly shooed them to their seats before the man who was claiming to be her father could say anything. He seemed rather annoyed with this, although Jenny was getting the feeling that that was par for the course when things weren't going his way. As much as she didn't want to admit it, Dad had been kinda like that. He wasn't quite so abrasive about it, though.

She had expected him to try and start talking about it during dinner, but surprisingly, he sat by idly, chatting with Susie. He produced a large yo-yo from his pocket, his very tiny pocket, and was showing her how it worked.

He also hadn't touched his food.

"Not 'ungry?" Marla asked.

He glanced at the bowl. "No, sorry. Ate before I came." He grinned. "Besides, I've had enough beans for a lifetime. Which for me, is a very long time. They are lovely for playing songs though. Not a fruit, but very musical." He winked at Susie, who giggled.

He drew several odd looks from the group. "Sorry," he said again. "Old Earth saying. They called beans a fruit instead of a legume."

"Why'd it be musical?" Charles asked softly. That actually took Jenny by surprise. It was rare to hear him speak.

"Well," the man said after a pause, "that's not exactly polite dinner conversation." His eyes were narrow, and he was studying the other man. Not that Charles probably noticed. Jenny has seen a great deal go right over his head.

After a moment of silence, Marla spoke up. "So, did ya find w'at you was looken for a t'e map?"

"Of course," he said. "I wanted to talk to you about that."

"'Bout what?"

"Are you interested in getting off this station?"

Marla gave him a look that was partly suspicious and partly disbelieving. "'Course I do. We all do."

"Well, I can do that."

"'Ow?"

"We need to get the computer core. I can shut everything down from there."

She put down her fork. "Do ya know w'ere it is?"

"In a general idea, yes. Most stations built in the 61st century were built along the same lines."

Marla stared at nothing for a moment then focused on the strange man. "T'at bastard lives near t'e core. The 'ighest level of security surrounds it. Can ya get us past t'at?"

"Yes."

She leaned forward. "Ya completely daft. Ya s'ow up outta now'ere, spout off stuff t'at don't make sense, and claim ta be a Time Lord." Her eyes narrowed. "So w'y do I believe that ya can 'elp us?"

The man grinned again. "Because I'm good. I'm very, very good."

She stared at him for a moment then sighed. "All right. First t'ing in t'e morning."

"The sooner we get it done, the better."

She shook her head. "T'is plan of yars is completely daft in t'e first place. We're not taking any risk we don't 'ave too."

The man leaned back with another one of his annoyed looks. "Fine, but first thing in the morning."

Marla smiled. "A little waiten never killed anybody."

The man shook his head. "Yet."


	3. Jenny's Memories

The man was sitting in the corner fiddling with the display. Jenny was sitting at the table, playing absently with an empty cup and a spoon, staring at him. No matter how hard she tried, so couldn't accept that this man was her father, yet at the same time, she couldn't deny it.

It was frustrating to say the least.

Her thoughts drifted back to Messaline. In a way, she missed the naivety of her life there, especially when it came to the unique circumstance surrounding her, for lack of a better word, birth. To her, progenation seemed perfectly normal. Sure, you could have children the long way, but it you needed someone quickly, well, why not? Everyone was the same.

Once she had found her way off the planet and out into the universe, she had found that people didn't quite believe that. Progenation was almost exclusively used to create workers, settlers, or soldiers, all tasks that required long hours and lots of manpower. There, progenated people were important. But everywhere else, they were second class citizens, almost nothing more than machines. She had found herself suddenly very happy for the family she had.

What she had found most striking were the stories and myths about them. She had overheard a couple of children talking about them, ignoring the worker right next to them. They had said that they were nothing more than computer programs that had been downloaded into a human body.

That wasn't how Jenny had remembered it. She wasn't a program or some machine. She did have all this knowledge stuff back in her head that she tried her best to ignore, but still.

She actually couldn't remember anything before she was "born". There was no sudden flash of insight or feeling of coming into existence. Suddenly, she just was.

When the machine had opened, the gas that had served as a catalysis spilling out, she found herself stepping outside and looking around. There were walls and a ceiling, though she couldn't say how she knew they were called that. She just did. Knowledge had swelled in her mind, almost like a voice barking at, telling her everything she'd need to know, like a drill sergeant. Not that she had known what that was either before right then.

"Here, arm yourself," a voice had said, shoving a gun into her hands. She hadn't known she had hands.

It was a P290 suppression rifle. She knew it as well as she did her own hands, and just as suddenly too.

She examined the stock and barrel, noting the position of the firing pin. She pulled out her gun's magazine, checking to make sure that the bullets where ready. All the while more voices from the outside were talking. She had heard other voices, but they hadn't matter. They weren't soldiers, so they could wait.

But suddenly one of the voices cut through. It came outside, yet oddly in a way, from her mind. "Well, she's, well… She's my daughter."

She had looked up. He was the first real person she'd seen. He was tall with brown hair and deep brown eyes that seemed so guarded. There had been a sense of familiarity about him, and for the first time, the knowledge didn't tell her anything. For a heartbeat, she hadn't known what to do, but then a different voice murmured in the back of her mind, supplying what she needed.

She had smiled. "Hello Dad."

The inner-sergeant started barking again and she'd followed. She was a soldier, it had told her, and it was time to fight.

And she did.

After the battle was over, after she'd destroyed the tunnel, he had been mad. She hadn't understood why, she had just done what she was told to. So he had lost his friend and his ship on the other side. He still had his other friend, he had come out ahead. Repeating that to them hadn't got the reaction she had been hoping for.

He had been disappointed in her and it was crushing. And she had found herself questioning what she knew. It was following these orders and protocols that had made Dad angry. But she had only done what had made sense. There was nothing else there, not even a name to give Donna when she asked.

"She's a generated anomaly."

"Generated anomaly. Generated. Well, what about that? Jenny."

"Jenny?" The military side of her hadn't even bothered with a response, but that low murmur from before, the one that had told her who her father was, did. "Yeah, I like that. Jenny."

After they had all been escorted to headquarters, she found she knew exactly who General Cobb was, probably another benefit from her military side. Dad had seemed a little cautious at first, as if he was feeling the General out. He had scoffed at the idea of the Source and seemed different in every way, almost like the other low murmur in her mind.

When Cobb had declared a way to end the war, Dad had snapped.

"Then you need to get yourself a better dictionary. When you do, look up genocide, and you'll see a little picture of me there and a caption that reads 'Over my dead body!'"

Unsurprisingly, they had been thrown in a cell. Hardly even a moment passed before Dad had been moving. Watching him plan and scheme, Jenny couldn't help but feel he was a soldier. He had denied it, but it was there. Maybe he wasn't a soldier like she was, but he was a soldier none the less. Maybe he had reached some sort of balance between his military side and his other side. Her two sides seemed to be in direct conflict.

She could learn so much from him.

Which is why she was almost crushed when he tried to leave her behind. Before she could even speak, Donna was defending her. She hadn't understood at the time what happened next.

Donna asked Dad for something called a stethoscope, and held it to Jenny's chest. After listening for a moment, she held the ear buds out for Dad. As he listened, though they were still guarded, she could see the pain in his eyes.

"Two hearts."

"Exactly."

"What's going on?"

"Does that mean she's a… What do you call a female Time Lord?"

"What's a Time Lord?"

"It's who I am, where I'm from."

"And I'm from you."

His eyes had flashed, and for a moment, she felt such rage and power, beyond anything the military side of her could understand. "You're an echo. That's all. A Time Lord is so much more. A sum of knowledge, a code, a shared history, a shared suffering." The dull pain had returned then. "Only it's gone now. All of it." He sighed. "Gone forever."

She had still been trembling. "What happened?"

"There was a war."

"Like this one?"

He'd snorted. "Bigger. Much bigger."

"And you fought. And killed.

"Yes." It had been so soft she almost hadn't heard it.

"Then how are we different?"

He had stared at her, as if finally seeing what she was. Or maybe what she could be.

At the very least, he had taken her with them. He had complained during the escape, apparently annoyed at some of her methods, but they seemed to have less of a sting to them.

She had noticed something odd after they had gotten away, and were approaching the Source, that mythical thing that both Cobb's army and the enemy army, the Hath, were hunting. The two of them, Dad and Donna, they were always going on about things. Trying to figure out puzzles that really didn't matter. A soldier didn't think that much, so maybe Dad wasn't a soldier. Donna certainly wasn't. So what were they, what did they do?

"I travel, through time and space."

"He saves planets," Donna supplied, "rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures, and runs a lot. Seriously, there's an outrageous amount of running involved."

Jenny had grinned. Now that sounded amazing.

Soon after they had found themselves trapped in a corridor, a Mark 74 Abraham Laser Grid (according to her military side) in front of them and Cobb's army closing from behind. Dad would be able to fix it, she knew he could, but he'd need time.

And she could buy him that time.

But as she had started to run back to find a good place to 'stall' the enemy, Dad had stopped her.

"Where are you going?"

"I can hold them up."

"No, we don't need any more dead."

"But it's them or us."

"It doesn't mean you have to kill them."

"I'm trying to save your life."

He had grabbed her shoulder's then, his face earnest. "Listen to me: killing," he had paused. "After a while, it infects you. Once it does, you're never rid of it."

"But we don't have a choice.

"We always have a choice."

"I'm sorry." She had ran back to hold them, hearing him call after her.

She had settled behind a crate, and saw them charging up toward her. She had opened fire, driving them into cover. They, of course, returned the favor.

A minute passed, ducking in and out of cover, keeping the enemy at bay. Nothing really seemed to have been happening, though. Finally, she had found herself staring at her P290. The military side of her was screaming for her to shoot and kill, but the other side, it just seemed sad.

"Jenny, come on!"

"I'm coming."

Cobb had help up a hand. "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

"Jenny, leaving, let's go," her Dad had yelled from down the hall.

Cobb had stepped out into the center of the corridor. "You're a child of the machine. You're on my side. Join us. Join us in the war against the Hath. It's in your blood, girl, don't deny it."

Jenny leveled her P290 at him. No, she wasn't like that. She was his child, the child of a Time Lord. She could stop this army cold. One clear shot and Cobb would be dead.

_Listen to me: killing… after a while, it infects you. Once it does, you're never rid of it._

_ He saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures, and runs a lot._

_ What's a Time Lord?_

_ It's who I am, where I'm from._

_ And I'm from you._

_ Well, she's, well… She's my daughter._

It was in that moment that Jenny had made her final decision. It didn't matter what she was created to be, she was the Doctor's daughter, and she wanted to be just like him.

And so she hadn't killed Cobb. Instead, she had shot the pipe above him, causing high pressure steam to shoot down in front of him. It would stall their advance till they could find the shut off, buying her Dad some time.

When she had reached the Mark 74 ALG, Donna and Dad were at the far end of the hall. Right before she crossed the threshold into the grid itself, it reactivated.

"Oh, no, no, no," Dad had said. "The circuits' moved back."

"Zap it back again!" Donna cried.

"The controls are back there."

Jenny could hear the army behind her resume their charge. "They're coming."

"Wait, just-" Dad looked around rapidly. "There isn't- Jenny, I can't-"

"I'll have to manage on my own, then" she had said with a grin, tossing the P290 to the side. The military side of her was screaming that it was impossible, that she should have shot Cobb, and that she was going to die. Her other side was quite confident, however. "Watch and learn, Father," she had said with a grin.

She had dived forward, twisting her body and using the momentum to carry through the grid. Each movement had merged into the next, and she spun, going hand to floor to foot to floor to hand to foot, _et cetera_. When she had landed her final flip, she had been shaking with adrenaline but smiling widely.

"But that was impossible!" Donna sputtered.

"Not impossible," Dad had said with a grin as big as Jenny's, "just a bit unlikely." He grabbed her in a hug and her heart soared. "Brilliant. You were brilliant. Brilliant."

She had started to babble as he released her. "I didn't kill him. General Cobb, I could've killed him, but I didn't. You were right." She could see in his eyes that he was proud of her.

Cobb ruined the moment, of course, by showing up on the other side of the grid. And so they ran. She had almost been in a daze. He was proud of her.

Later, as Dad had been trying to find their way, Donna told her about what it was like to travel with him and to see new worlds.

"I'd love to see new worlds."

"You will. Won't she, Doctor?"

"Hmm?"

"You think Jenny will see any new worlds."

He had regarded her for a moment. "I suppose so."

It dawned on her what that meant. "You mean, you mean, you'll take me with you?"

"Well, we can't leave you here, can we?"

The idea made her ecstatic. She had raced off, hoping to find the way as soon as she could so they could finish as quickly as possible.

Finally, after nearly being run down again by Cobb's army, they found a ship. Not just a ship, the ship that had brought everyone here, just over a week before. And that was the biggest thing. An entire war, fought in a week, all thanks to machines that could pump out soldiers by the dozens and hundreds to go and die.

In the ship, they found the Source. And then Dad ended it. Both armies, Cobb's and the Hath pointing guns at him, and he ended. He smashed the Source, releasing the terraforming gases it carried to change the surface of the planet from a radioactive swamp to an idyllic forest. And as the golden gas slowly climbed up toward vents to make it ways out into world, both armies lay down their weapons.

Except Cobb.

Jenny had been standing next to Dad and just happened to be looking the right way. In Cobb's eyes, it had been easy to see he felt cheated of victory. As his arm started to move, for the first time, her military side and other side were in agreement, and she stepped in the way of the bullet.

Dad had caught her as she fell. She'd heard Cobb get wrestled down by his own men. It was suddenly hard to breathe. She had found her gaze wandering, trying to take in as much as she could. The golden gases had caught her eye. "A new world. It's beautiful."

"Jenny," Dad had said as it got even harder to breathe, "be strong now. You need to hold on, you hear me." He was smiling at her, but it was a fake one. "We've got things to do, you and me. Hey? Hey?" He paused. "We can go anywhere, everywhere, you choose."

She'd known that was never going to happen, but for some reason, when he said it, it gave her hope. "That sounds good."

He then put one hand on her check. "You're my daughter, and we've only just got started." It was almost impossible to breathe. "You're going to be great. You're going to more than great. You're going to be amazing. You hear me, Jenny."

She had been staring into his eyes as the last of her breath faded. The guards in his eyes had come down again and she could finally see him for what he was. So much pain and rage, wounded pride and loneliness, such a love for life yet such a fear of it. He wasn't a soldier. Soldiers followed orders, went into battle and died.

No. He was a warrior, a beast, a man who, if he ever wanted to, could crush everything that was, is, and could ever be. It was almost like he was a reflection of the universe itself, a collection of all things, good and bad, a sinner trying to be a saint. If he was a Time Lord, than he must have been their greatest, because she couldn't imagine another like him.

Those had been her closing thoughts as the world had gone dark.

The darkness seemed to last forever. Finally, a noise that she had never heard before echoed. It was like a whine or maybe a groan, perhaps even a wheeze. What it ever it was, something about resonated inside of her.

No, she wasn't dead yet. And so she woke up, startling the Hath and human standing over her.

"Hello boys," she said with a grin.

A sudden clatter shook her out of her reverie. Carlos had knocked over several crates, including one filled with guns. P290s, AK749s, Glock Sigmas and even a Merdock 598 Personal Stunner were sprawled across the floor.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, waving sheepishly, bending over to start picking up the crates.

"Are you okay?" she asked, getting up to help him.

"Yeah, of course," he said. He smiled at her. "Still just a little shaken up from today. Really close call, you know."

"How close?" The man claiming to be Dad was standing behind them.

Carlos shrugged. "You know, close."

"Tell me."

"I-" Carlos stopped. "I really don't remember."

"Not really all that surprising," Jenny said, getting the last crate into place. "I'm sure lots of people find remembering traumatic events hard."

The man was frowning. He snorted. "Maybe."

Carlos shook his head. "I think I'm going to go to bed. A night's rest should do me good." He nodded to Jenny and then headed for his bunk.

"You should go to bed too," the strange man said. "We have a long day tomorrow."

She turned to make a retort, something along the lines about how he wasn't her father and he should treat her like a child, but stopped. She had only seen it for a second as he turned away, but his eyes had a very familiar dull pain.


	4. The Park

**Author's Note: I'm not going to deny, I'm a little worried about how people are going to react to this chapter. I won't spoil it, since it'll stand out. There's a point, I promise.**

For the first time in her very short memory, Jenny couldn't sleep. She spent the night tossing and turning, her mind racing through Messaline and the weeks that had followed. It didn't help that the man claiming to be her father had spent the night walking around, fiddling with the display and muttering to himself. When the others started to stir, she pushed herself up with resignation and glowered at the man with sandy eyes.

"Did you even sleep?"

"Sleep? Yes, I got enough." He gave her a slight grin. "Time Lords don't sleep much. Except when they're sick. Or very young."

She frowned at him. "I'm not a child."

There was a loud yawn behind them. Marla rolled out of her bunk and stretched, her joints popping. She shook her head and stifled another yawn.

She looked at the man for a moment. "Well, Doctor, ya still t'ink you can get us off t'is station?"

"Of course."

"T'en t'ere's not much point in wastin time, now is t'ere?"

It was decided by consensus to leave Luanne and Susie behind. The little girl was too young to be put in that level of danger and she needed someone to look after her. Besides, with Luanne's one arm missing from the elbow down, it wasn't feasible for her to move and shoot at the same time. And the one thing that Jenny was sure of was that there was going to be shooting.

No matter what the man said.

The area they needed to cross was an old hydroponics bay that doubled as a park. It, like everywhere else, was filled with tentacles. Using the display, Jenny could count around fifty separate entities, though the real number was probably closer to twice that. In the hall outside the park, the man was running his sonic screwdriver over the walls.

"What exactly are you looking for?" Jenny asked.

"An emergency override. They should be littered through the station."

"Why?"

He paused to look at her. "Because running all these tentacles and things with an independent system would be too inefficient." He turned back to the wall and aimed the screwdriver at it. "Not to mention, we'd be able to see the external systems controlling them. So the only way they can possibly function is if they're linked through the station systems. Therefore, if I can find the override, I can stall them long enough for us to slip past. And that override should be in this wall." The screwdriver's pitch changed. "Like this one," he said, flashing her a grin.

He ran the screwdriver around the seams and the panel promptly popped off. Dust and stale air wafted out. The inside was dark and all Jenny could see was decaying wire.

"All right, not this one," the man said with an annoyed look.

It took him five minutes to locate another override. When the panel popped off this one, it was over flowing with glowing cables and wire. The man spent another twenty minutes of playing with it, pulling some wires out and reattaching them, even yanking a full ten feet of cable straight out, all the while ignoring Georgie, who kept nervously asking him if he was done.

"W'y not just yank t'em all out?" the young man finally asked.

"Yank them all out?" the other man retorted indignantly. "Yank them all out? You want me to yank them all out."

"Yea'."

"Oh, that sounds like a grand idea. I mean, it would only cause the system to completely ignore this juncture and reroute through another. Which means it'd be thirty seconds before the system was fully operational again. That park is about a kilometer long. Can you run that in thirty seconds? If not, you'd meet a rather gruesome end. Unless you want me to yank them all, although, a good half of them are probably on the other side."

"I'm sorry," Georgie managed to stammer.

The man jabbed his screwdriver toward him. "I'm trying to re-path the override circuit to delay anything from getting through. If done right, the system won't know why it's not responding, giving us time to get across, before it figures it out what happened. Now, unless you have any more helpful ideas," he grumbled, turning back to the override.

"Why not use it on the override toward the exit?" Jenny asked.

"What?"

"If you can delay the tentacles long enough for us to get by, why not just do it at the market on the way in? We can all slip past there and just escape. Why go deeper into the station?"

The man opened his mouth as if to say something.

"I mean, unless you have some sort of other motive. Like a driving need to figure out what's going on no matter how many lives it costs."

It was deadly silent for a moment.

"I don't know if Susie and her mother could get across fast enough," he finally said.

"Why not? The market is smaller than here."

"Because I don't know if this is going to work."

Jenny blinked. "What?"

The man had turned back to the override. "I'm pretty sure it's going to work, almost positively. But there is a chance it won't, a chance better than I'd like." He tugged something out. "I'm not willing to risk the life of a child on it." He glanced back at her over his shoulder. "Does that scare you?"

"No."

"Are you sure? If anyone has changed their mind, well." He let it drift off.

"No, Doctor, we're still 'ere," Marla said. "Ya right about risking Susie. S'e's my only granddaug'ter, and I'm not puttin 'er in any danger I don't 'ave ta. T'is station puts us in enoug'. 'Sides, we mig't run inta t'at bastard over t'ere, and I'd love ta put a bullet in 'is 'ead."

The man frowned slightly at that declaration of violence but let it pass without comment.

Finally, after connecting another wire, he shoved them haphazardly into the wall. "Good," he said, standing. "We're ready to go when you are."

Georgie held out an AK749. The man hesitated for a moment with a slight look of distaste, but took it.

Jenny looked at each of them in turn as they clustered by the door. Marla had tied her silver hair back and was clutching her gun with a determined look. Georgie eyes were wide, but the P290 in his hands was steady. Carlos' eyes were just as wide and he was trembling slightly. Charles looked the same as always, as if he only had the vaguest of ideas of what was going on, his fingers twitching slightly around the trigger. The man who claimed to her dad fumbled his gun for a moment as he attempted to fix that ridiculous bow thing around his neck.

"All right," Marla said, "I'm takin t'e front, Georgie 'old t'e rear. Stick close and keep movin, understand?"

There was a murmur of agreement.

Marla paused, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The room was eerie. All the trees and flowers were intact. There was even an old playground nestled in the corner. It had a few dings but was surprisingly undamaged in comparison to the rest of the station.

However, spread across this entire scene of serenity, there were tentacles. None of them were moving. It was odd how Jenny didn't find that comforting.

Marla was traveling at a good clip, not a jog, but certainly much faster than a walk. Carlos was right behind her, followed by Charles, and then Jenny herself. Behind her was the strange man, and behind him was Georgie.

Jenny's eyes were darting back and forth. At one point she thought she saw movement, but it was a trick of her eyes.

Carlos had started muttering.

She heard a sharp intake of breath from Georgie. She glanced back and felt her heart sink.

A tentacle was moving.

"I think it would be in our best interest to hurry it up," the strange man said.

Marla broke out in a jog, the rest of them following in suite.

There were more tentacles moving now.

It was Charles who shot first. Jenny would have guessed it'd be Marla or herself, or maybe Carlos, if he got too scared. A tentacle descended on them rapidly, its saw spinning. Before she had a chance to raise her gun, it was down.

"Come on!" Marla yelled, going into a full run.

Jenny opened fire after that.

A blaster bolt burned a hole in a tree across from her.

Another tentacle shot out across the ground. She managed to jump over it, but the strange man stumbled on it. It tried to wrap itself around his leg, but he managed to slip free of it somehow.

A liquid barely missed her, leaving a steaming pit in the grass.

The door was in sight.

Another blaster grazed her back.

There was a sudden yell behind her. She glanced back.

She couldn't see Georgie.

The strange man strange man hit her from behind, his shoulder ramming the blaster burn on her back. The pain made her gasp and freeze up, but their momentum carried them through the door. A tentacle spewing flame followed, only to have Carlos unload a clip into it.

Jenny was pushing herself up, her mind raging. Why the hell had he-

"W'ere's Georgie?" Marla asked, firing bursts from the door with Carlos and Charles.

"He didn't make it," the man said, his voice weak. "I'm sorry."

Jenny's eyes widened in horror as she looked at him. There was a spike in his back, going all the way through his chest. He breathing was already labored.

"W'at do you mean 'e didn't make it?" Marla practically screeched.

Carlos kicked the flame tentacle back through the door and hit the control. The door snapped shut. "He's dead, Marla."

Suddenly, she looked very old, as if her gun was too heavy for her. She stared at the strange man for a moment, at blood that was the wrong shade dripping off of the spike, then sat down, tears in her eyes.

"Help me up," the man murmured to Jenny.

"What do you mean, help you up?"

"There's something I have to do."

"You're not in the condition to do anything right now."

The man stared at her, his breathing labored. His eyes were determined. After a moment of resignation, Jenny grabbed his arm to slowly help him.

"What's so damn important?" she demanded.

"Remember what I said about Time Lords when they get close to dying?"

"That they regenerate."

The man grinned at her, though it came off as more of a grimace. Suddenly, Jenny realized he was glowing. "It's not really something I can do lying down anymore these days. Too much excess energy."

He shifted his weight, placing one hand on her shoulder, the other on the spike. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice barely higher than a whisper. "I wish I could have gotten to know you better before something like this happened."

In one motion, he pushed Jenny back, causing her to stumble, and pulled the spike out of his chest.

And then he burst into flames. Well, not flames, but close, golden energy flaring away from his face and hands. It was blinding, forcing Jenny to shield her eyes.

It was also odd. She couldn't quite feel it, no heat or any sort of tingling sensation. But she felt the force. And something else that she felt could only be described as, well, time.

And suddenly, just as quickly as it had started, it stopped.

A different man was standing there, panting. He was wearing the same clothes, but he was undoubtedly a different man.

"What the hell is-" Carlos started.

The man's hand flew out, holding up one finger. "Hold on. Okay, hold on." He held the other hand and wiggled the fingers. "Okay, ten fingers. Well, eight fingers and two thumbs." He pulled his hands in closer. "Eight finger nails, two thumb nails. That's good." He looked down. "Ten toes, I think. I can't really tell because I'm wearing shoes. Ow. Oww." He started hopping around on one foot. "Shoes. That. Are. Too. Small." He pulled one off and tossed it aside, then repeated the process with the other.

"How did you-" Carlos tried again.

"Just wait, hold on," the man said again. "Okay, knees and elbows bend in the right direction. That's good. Be a pain if they didn't." His hands went to his head. "Okay, hair. Oh, short hair. Eh, I've had shorter. Okay, forehead's kinda big." He went to his face. "Wow, nose is very pointy this time. Chin's pointy too. Oh god, I hope my ears aren't." His hands flew to his ears. "No, good. Normal, very normal. Could you imagine pointy ears? People would think I was an elf. What is it with you lot and elves?" He glanced at them. His eyes went wide and he swayed. "Oohf, wow. Okay, new eye level there. A little bit of vertigo."

He stared past them for a moment. "Wow, that's a big robot."

Jenny spun around. Behind them, looking almost as if it was as perplexed by this strange man as they were, was a robot about three meters tall. Each arm ended in a very large blade and it looked like some sort of stunner was attached to its shoulder.

"Sentinel!" Carlos screamed.

"Run!" Jenny barked, grabbing Marla's arm and pushing Charles to the closest door.

"Run? I love running!"


	5. Cheating Death

**Author's Note: I feel terrible that I missed my own self-imposed deadline. Unfortunately, between school and work, and lack of sleep, free time vanishes pretty quickly. To make up for it, I wrote an extra two pages than normal. Plus, there's a ton of exposition.**

The door opened into a very small, sparsely decorated room. There were two bunks in the corner and what looked probably like a small closet. There was no exit.

Carlos was already inside, pressed against the far wall. Jenny pushed Charles into the room hard, causing him to stumble into one of the bunks, and hauled Marla with her. Mr. Time Lord dashed in on their tail.

The sentinel was too big to get through the door, but that didn't stop it from trying.

"We're trapped!" Carlos screamed, already in full panic mode. "We're all going to die!"

"Quiet," Jenny scolded him, pressing herself again a wall as well. She looked at Mr. Time Lord. "Any ideas?"

He shrugged. "I dunno yet. Brain's still trying to catch up. It's never good to regenerate in stressful circumstances for that exact reason. Well, that and the chance it'll go wrong. Big enough chance of that in the first place, but throw in stress, and boom."

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," Carlos was murmuring.

"Can't you speed it up?"

"Maybe, but it'll need a big reason."

"Bigger than this?"

"Just a little."

The sentinel managed to shift itself enough to poke its stunner through the door. It loosed a blast of light, catching Carlos in the chest and tumbling him to the ground.

"Okay, that might work," Mr. Time Lord said, his eyes a bit wide. "Okay, think, think." He pressed his thumb between his eyebrows. "What can I do?"

"Won't your sonic screwdriver work?"

"No, no, the setting I'd have to use would require me to get close."

The stunner hit Marla, not that is caused much noticeable effect in her current state.

"How close?"

"Too close."

Jenny shook her head. "You're useless. Fine." She pushed herself off the wall, shifted her gun to her shoulder, and opened fire. She didn't shot at the sentinel, but instead at the wall she had just been pressed against. And she didn't bother trying to shoot in some sort of arch either. Her military side told her that was a fallacy, and her other side agreed. What she could do, however, was weaken the structure. She emptied the clip into it, in the vague shape of a person. She tossed the gun aside and took another step back, a stunner bolt barely missing her. And then she sprinted at toward it.

And promptly bounced back off.

Her military side scoffed, but she ignored it.

Her second charge into the wall was slightly more successful. She didn't get through, but the wall buckled. She backed up for a third charge.

The stunner caught her in the back. Her body went stiff and the world went dark.

The light came back slowly, bit by bit. Her body didn't want to respond, but she could feel it numbly following orders. Finally, her head finished clearing, and she pushed herself up.

The world promptly spun.

"Careful," a voice she recognized as Mr. Time Lord's new one said. "The stunner will leave you a bit hazy."

"I know," she retorted thickly. She glanced around. They were in an identical room, save for the giant killer machine in the entrance and a bullet ridden wall. "Where are we?"

"Another set of crew quarters," he said with a grin. "I managed to kick down the wall after it got you. Charles and I dragged you three into the next set and then down the hall to an entirely new one. The sentinel doesn't seem to know where we've gone, fortunately. Not so useless after all, eh?"

"Maybe." She glanced at the others. Charles was sitting on the end of the bunk nearest the door, his gun in hand, bouncing his knee. Marla had woken up and was staring blanking ahead. Carlos was out cold. "How long has it been?"

"About twenty minutes," Mr. Time Lord said with a shrug. "Give or take. About average for a stunner that size. None the less, once he gets up, we should be on our way. The sooner we find the core, the sooner we'll be free of this place."

"Is t'ere any point?" Marla asked, her voice hoarse. "My son and my 'usband, both taken by t'at bastard. Is t'ere any point in trying anymore?"

"Of course," Jenny said.

"There's still Susie," Mr. Time Lord said softly. "Or would you just abandon her to die as well?"

Marla blinked then hung her head. "No, I suppose yar rig't," she said after a moment. "S'e's the last of my line." When she looked back up, her eyes were filled with fire. "But we're 'unting t'at bastard down. T'is ends tonig't."

The door slid up and Charles gun leapt to his shoulders.

"Woa', woa', it's me."

"Georgie!" Marla cried.

Sure enough, Georgie was standing in the door, a slightly loopy grin on his face. "'Ello, Mum."

Marla was on her feet in a heartbeat, grabbing her son in a crushing hug. "I t'oug't ya was dead."

"Me ta."

"How'd you get away?" Jenny asked in amazement.

"I dunno. It 'appened kinda fast. Like I was runnin on pure instinct or sometin."

"What about the sentinel?" Mr. Time Lord asked, his eyes narrow. "How'd you get past it?"

"Sentinel? I dunno, it must 'ave been somew'ere else."

Mr. Time Lord shook his head. "No, it was right outside that door. That was the only exit. So if you came from the garden, you would have seen it."

Everyone was staring at Georgie. "I must not remember it. Besides, w'o are ya?" he retorted.

"T'at's t'e Doctor," Marla said quietly.

"W'at? T'at can't be 'im."

"I've regenerated," he said calmly. "A little trick Time Lords use to cheat death. So how did you cheat it? Because giant robots with blades for arms aren't the kinda thing someone just forgets seeing. Besides, I saw you. You tripped on that tentacle that tried to grab Jenny and me. You fell and a saw cut off your head. I remember that because right next to the tentacle with the saw was the one with the spike that I knocked Jenny out of the way for. The spike that caused me to regenerate." His eyes were serious and cold. "So who are you?"

Georgie opened his mouth then closed it again. "I dunno," he finally managed.

"T'is is my son," Marla said fiercely, tightening her grip on him. "I know 'e is."

Mr. Time Lord cocked an eyebrow. "Okay, maybe it is. But he most certainly didn't come from the garden, so where then? The only answer must be from the opposite direction. So looks like we're going that way, okay?" He frowned. "I'm saying 'okay' a lot, aren't I?"

"Yeah," Jenny said with a little nod.

"That's new. I hope it's not a verbal tick. Never had one of those before, but for some reason I don't think I'd like them."

Carlos groaned.

"Oh, looks like Sleeping Beauty is finally awake," Mr. Time Lord said with a grin.

"Who?" Jenny asked.

"Sleeping Beauty." He looked around at everyone staring at him. "You know, the fairy tale? How do you lot get through the day without fairy tales?"

"What the bloody hell's a fairy tale?" Carlos asked, pushing himself up.

Mr. Time Lord just shook his head sadly. "Never mind."

After giving Carlos a brief chance to recover himself, taking into account what they currently had to work with (three guns, Charles', the one that had been hooked around Carlos' arm, and the one Georgie had walked in with), they set off. They moved down the corridor cautiously, Mr. Time Lord, Charles, and Georgie in the front, Marla, Carlos and Jenny, who had liberated Carlos' gun, in the rear.

"Does any of this look familiar?" Mr. Time Lord asked.

Georgie shook his head.

Finally, they ducked in a doorway after hearing the heavy thumps of another sentinel. Marla secured the lock as the rest of them looked around.

The room was enormous. Bigger than any of the others they've seen. And it was filled with dull metal boxes. But they weren't crates.

Jenny gasped. "Progenation machines."

"Dozens," Mr. Time Lord agreed. "Maybe even close to a hundred. A station this big, it might not be a bad idea to keep a good number around in case you had to sudden re-crew something. Big tankers, salvage operations. Probably helped fund this place."

The entire group was looking around.

"They look different," Jenny said.

"You mean than the ones that created you?"

"Yeah."

"You're progenated?" Carlos asked.

"Is that a problem?"

"No, you just seemed so, human."

"Well, I'm not. I'm Time Lord."

"Time Lady, actually." Mr. Time Lord flashed her another grin. "That's the feminine form." He turned back to the machines. "These look different because they're permanent. The one they shoved my hand in, at gun point might I add, was a colonial system. It's only supposed to be there long enough to produce enough colonists. That's why they had the more primitive gene system that took a tissue sample. These ones here are probably hooked up to a computer. You go to a clinic, and they take a blood sample. Those get uploaded into a computer which sends them here, the genes get resequenced and out pops a person. Virtually painless."

"Well, they're not people," Carlos said in a pained voice.

"No, they are. Granted, people that were created very quickly and given a knowledge upgrade. Although, those have pretty much replaced school by this century, so that should be that relatively normal."

"So these are what progenation machines are supposed to look like?" Jenny asked.

Mr. Time Lord was frowning. "Huh."

"Huh?"

He quickly walked around the machine. "That's not right."

"What's not right?"

He went around back again.

"What's not right?" Jenny repeated, following him.

He was kneeling, looking at a bundle of cords that went from the base to the ceiling. "There should only be one cord."

"What?"

"There should only be a single cord. That's all it needs. One cord that will carry the genetic code and the knowledge upgrade down to the machine. It does the rest, recombines the DNA and downloads the knowledge into the brain. So why are there more?"

"Nothin gettin t'rough t'at door for a w'ile," Marla said, coming around the other side of the machine. "W'at ya two doin?"

"There are too many cords, apparently," Jenny said.

Mr. Time Lord pulled out his screwdriver and popped the panel off. He squinted. "This has been reprogrammed. Completely."

"W'y?"

"I don't know." He poked his screwdriver around inside. "There's not much of a point. It makes people, that's it." He blinked. "Oh. Okay, that's, that's, okay, wow."

"You're saying 'okay' again."

"Sorry, I've got to work on that. But it explains everything."

"W'at explains everyt'in?"

"These machines aren't progenating anymore. They're cloning."

"Clonin w'o?"

He turned to her. "You."

"Me?"

"All of you." He stood up, his eyes following the cords to the ceiling. "Progenation machines create people, and that's exactly what it's been doing. I couldn't figure it out earlier. How you could subtract two from three and have it equal two. It didn't add up, literally. But I didn't know about this variable. Whenever one of you dies, this machine creates a new you. It's terrible, horrible, and explains all of it. Especially the side effect."

"Side effect?"

"Yes. It's been bugging me since I got here." He glanced at her. "Haven't you noticed? Each time some had a close call, they were twitchier. It was harder to breathe, they had less endurance. You probably brushed it off as nerves, but it wasn't. Degradation."

"W'at?"

"Degradation. It's a side effect. You see, when they first came up with the idea of Progenation, they thought it was perfect. Get rid of the need for people to bother carrying around children. But in practice, it was anything but. They noticed each generation was successively weaker than the generation before it. Soon, after ten, twenty generations, you have people dying almost minutes after being born, their bodies literally falling apart. When the machine split the diploid into haploids and recombines them, it damages the DNA. Not much, but each time it stacked on more. Soon, well, you got people who lived just long enough to die."

"That didn't happen with me," Jenny said softly.

"Of course not. You were created after they fixed the problem. They found there was a trend, the same genes getting hit time after time. So they programmed the machines to insert false genes to correct the damage. And it worked. There's still degradation, but on a much smaller scale. It's unnoticeable normally. You have to look at hundreds or thousands of generations to notice it. Even then, it's small. So far, they haven't had enough successive generations to reach a point where it's dangerous."

"So w'y is it 'urtin us?"

"Because the machine isn't being allowed to work properly. It wants to recombine the DNA, but it can't. It just makes them as it's told. But that doesn't stop it from trying. It keeps tacking on the false genes, except now there's no damage. It's just excess, cluttering up the DNA. Cutting into things little by little. Cardio, respiratory, the nervous system. All of them are getting weighed down. And then there's the mental degradation."

"Mental degradation?"

"Yes. These machines are programmed to give you a knowledge upgrade, but it's installing an entire mind. That can't happen, not on this level, but it is. It must be leaving scars, stress on the psyche. Couple that with the fact their erasing your memories so that you don't remember dying or even this place, so that you just hurry home and have beans and tea and talk about what a close call you had. Your minds must get as fragmented as that map. And then, eventually, you end up like Charles." He leaned around the corner of the machine, looking at the young man. "It's happened so many times, he doesn't have much of a mind to work with. He can only live in the present, not the future or the past. No memories, no dreams."

"T'at's 'orrible. Ya really t'ink t'at's w'at's 'appening, Doctor?"

"Yes, I do."

"But why?" Jenny asked. "And how did they get the DNA, because I don't think the clinic is still open. And how do they get people's minds?"

"The answers to all of your questions are, I don't know." He looked back up at the ceiling. "But those cords go back out the door. I think following them might lead us to those answers."

Fortunately, the sentinel they had heard earlier was gone. They followed the cords at a much quicker pace. After about three hundred meters, the cables made a sudden right turn into a door. They also came back out of the door and continued down the hall. Had those cables not been a different color, they might have missed the door entirely.

When they stepped inside, Mr. Time Lord froze. "No. No that's not possible!"

"What is it?" Jenny asked.

He pointed at a short, squat column in front of them. "That's Dalek!"

"W'at?" Marla said, her eyes widening.

"It's Dalek," Mr. Time Lord scowled. He approached it, screwdriver out. "That doesn't make any sense. This isn't how the Daleks work. They don't bring people back to life, not even to torture them."

"Ya talk like ya know t'em, Doctor."

"I do, kinda. I've certainly fought them enough."

"But t'e Daleks are supposed ta be invincible and pure evil."

"Evil, yes, invincible on the other hand." He paused. "Wait, how do you know about the Daleks. Almost no knows about the Daleks these days. Or the Time Lords for that matter. How did you know about us?"

Marla shifted uncomfortably. "I like old stories."

"Well, at least you have that, even if you don't have fairy tales." He shook his head. "How do you lot not have fairy tales? Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs, Omega and the Giant Star." He blinked. "Wait, sorry, that last one's mine. None the less-" He stopped. "That's Cyber!"

"W'at?"

Mr. Time Lord pushed past them to another machine hooked into the wall. "This is Cyber technology. Why are Dalek and Cyber tech hooked up to each other? For that matter, why are they even the same room? I saw the Daleks and the Cybermen meet once, and they did not get along." He looked around the room. "That there is from the Dark Ages, before the galaxy as you lot knew it existed. And that, well, that." He shook his head. "Actually, I've never seen anything like that before." He hurried over to the final machine, that was hexagonal and pyramidal in shape. He popped of a small panel with the screwdriver. "Look at that, that's purple metal. That's brilliant, fantastic, amazing. Okay, I need a new catch phrase. But look, purple. I've never seen purple metal before."

"You seem pretty happy about that," Jenny observed.

"Of course. Nine-hundred plus years of space and time, and the universe has something new for me. That's marvelous. Oh, marvelous. I like that one." He grinned again.

"W'at's all t'is mean, Doctor?" Marla asked.

"What, sorry. I got distracted." He shoved the panel into his pocket. How it fit, Jenny couldn't tell. "Okay, so, this is what's making anything out there work. Daleks have highly advanced sensors. Not only does it scan everything in the here and now, it scans them in the past and future. That probably works with this." He tapped the machine from the Dark Ages. It was domed at the bottom before shooting up into a huge spike. "If I'm right, this takes both physical and physic imprints of us at the moment we die. That then gets sent over to the progenation machine. The Cyber tech is probably what's controlling the tentacles and sentinels. As for this purple one, actually, I don't know."

"Any ideas?" Jenny asked.

"If I had to guess, it's probably what's bringing in all the supplies you lot kept risking your lives for. I doubt this station get regular supply drops. What I find most impressive is that any of this is working. These machines are from completely different cultures and times. They shouldn't be compatible, yet here they are working with each other. It's marvelous. And terrible. Very terrible."

"But why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Unless." He drifted off.

"Unless what?"

"Huh? Sorry, nothing." He glanced around at them. "If you all want to know, the best way is to ask."

"Ya t'ink t'at would work?" Georgie asked with a snicker.

"If there is one thing I know, it's insane megalomaniacs. It'll work."

"Alrig't, Doctor, let's go," Marla said.

"Just wait a sec." He pulled out his screwdriver and did something to the Dalek column. "Okay, let's go." He paused. "Allons-y? Geronimo? I need a new phrase for that too. Um, charge?"

"Let's just go," Jenny said, rolling her eyes.


	6. The Doctor

**Author's Note: You might be wondering why this is up so much earlier than usual. Well, a couple of you might be wondering. Okay, one or two. Anyway, yeah, this week was the opposite of last week, "Oh my god, oh my god, it's ten o'clock on Tuesday, I haven't slept in 48 hours, and I haven't even started the next chapter!" vs. "Oh, hey, I'm done, and it's Monday..."**

"Is there a reason why we're in such a hurry?" Jenny asked. Mr. Time Lord was following the new cables down the hall with much more powerful strides than she had been expecting. She didn't have trouble keeping up, but the other four were starting to lag behind.

"It's impolite to keep our host waiting," he said in an offhand manner.

"Yes, because I'm sure he's expecting us."

He flashed a grin at her. "Why wouldn't he?"

His hand grabbed the frame of opened door as they passed, jerking him to a stop. He took two steps back and stared into a room.

"The cables keep going," Jenny said, stopping as well.

"W'at is it, Doctor?" Marla asked.

Mr. Time Lord was grinning. "Luggage distribution."

"W'at?"

"Luggage distribution," he repeated, walking into the room. "The station has two bays. There's the one we entered, the basic bay for freighters, yachts, and anyone who owns their own ship. The other bay is for shuttles, kinda like an airport." He glanced at them. "Right, sorry, no airplanes these days. Anyway, the shuttles are public transportation, and you stow your luggage aboard." He began to walk between rucksacks, suitcases, and bulky trunks. "When you arrive, it gets put here till you can come and pick it up." He cleared off a trunk and popped it open.

"Is there a reason we're here?" Jenny asked.

"We're about to meet our benefactor. I can hardly go in looking like this." He motioned to his clothes, frayed and tattered since his regeneration. "Not to mention, this." He pulled off the bow from his neck. "I have no idea what I was thinking with this. Well, actually, I do, but I get the feeling I don't have quite right kind of face for it these days." He pulled off his jacket and threw it to Jenny. "Hold onto that for me, will you?" He began tossing clothes into a pile on top of suitcase.

"I t'oug't we were in a 'urry," Georgie said.

"We are." Mr. Time Lord opened another trunk. "Just not a huge hurry. Only a big one."

"T'ere's a difference?"

"By about five minutes."

"Ya serious."

"Well, actually, five minutes, forty-seven seconds, twenty milliseconds, and nine nanoseconds."

"And ya know t'at 'ow?"

He glanced at Georgie. "I'm a Time Lord. I thought we went over this. Try to keep up." He fished out a pair of sturdy low cut boots. "Marvelous." He flashed another grin. "Certainly better than staying in my socks." He gathered up all the clothes and, with his teeth, grabbed the boots by their strings. "Leshs goah."

Once again, they were speeding through the halls. How Mr. Time Lord was keeping a hold on the giant pile of clothes in his hand, without dropping any of them, Jenny couldn't figure out.

The cables they were following finally opened into an observational area, a large dome made of glass, tempered most likely, crisscrossed with support beams. In the center of it was a machine, unlike any she had seen. Cables and wires boiled outward, both into the station itself and others into a series of displays, each showing a different picture. In the very center, hoisted above them and hooked into the machine itself, was a man. Jenny found it hard to tell where one stopped and the other began.

"Shay wrigh ere," Mr. Time Lord said between clenched teeth. He continued forward, stopping mere yards from the machine.

"There are intruders in my midst," a voice boomed from above. It was deep and gravely, almost sounding diseased.

Mr. Time Lord dumped the clothes in an unceremonious pile and spat the boots out. "Hi there. Sorry about just walking in like this, but we're in a bit of a hurry to get out of here, so I felt it might best to skip an appointment. That said, while I'm sure you're already getting large nasty machines to escort us out, I just really want to tell you about how marvelous that set up you have back there is." He began unbuttoning his shirt. "You don't mind if I change, do you?" Without waiting, he continued onward. "You know, it is really is magnificent. Oh, that's another good word. I think I like 'M' words." He tossed his shirt aside. "Okay, anyway, that set up. Dalek, Cyber, Dark Age and some purple tech I've never seen before, all completely incompatible with each other, all working with each other. Granted, working at a fraction of a percent of their efficiently, approximately point oh-oh-oh-two-eight-one-six-two-three percent, but working none-the-less."

His pants dropped and Jenny immediately felt her face flame. She averted her eyes, noticing Georgie, Carlos, and even Charles, doing the same. Marla was just grinning.

"Oh, okay, sorry about that. I forgot my last life had a thing against underwear. Anyway, back to the point, you have this amazing system set up. Yet you use it to kill and resurrect people in an endless cycle. Why?"

"I have achieved immortality," the voice boomed.

"If you say so."

"I do. But even with a mind as great as my own, an endless life is dull and uninteresting. I needed some amusement."

"Amusement." Mr. Time Lord's voice had changed. Gone was the playful youth from earlier. Now it was cold and very, very old. She risked a glance. He was wearing dark pants now, though he still hadn't found a shirt yet, he was lacing up the boots. "I see." He stood up and grabbed a white shirt and pulling it on. "One more thing, if you don't mind. You have a Dalek computer core. Judging from your tastes, you must have downloaded the historical archives."

"Indeed. They provide much amusement." The image on one of the displays grew till it was being shown on all of them. A ship shaped like disk was firing on a transport, incinerating it.

"Of course. An interesting race, the Daleks." He held up another shirt. "Polka-dot, not so much, right?" He tossed it aside. "All that hatred and all those weapons, an entire race devoted to erasing all life different than their own. And they've tried, again and again, to do so. So I wonder, do you know why we're all here? What stopped them? Who?"

Jenny looked at the screen. It held an image of a man with long gray hair and a haughty, superior look. The image changed and another man took its place. He looked younger, though maybe that was the intrepid look of recklessness in his eyes. Again the image changed. The next man was tall and grey haired, with the look of a gentleman who would probably bow and speak in a suave voice. He was replaced by a younger man, with a mass of curly hair and looked as if he was always excited about what was to come next. The next man was even younger, barely looking older than Jenny looked herself, with a kind face, but sad eyes. The man following that was the complete opposite, condescending eyes that held maybe a glimmer of compassion. The next man had a playful face but cold and calculating eyes. His successor was young again, very young, with lingering lines of shattered naivety. He was replaced by a broken man, short hair and despair etched across his face.

The next man made Jenny's hearts skip. It was Dad, glaring with the determination she remembered from the end of that war.

And he was replaced with the strange man, bow tie and all, who had spent all this time trying to tell her. And he was replaced with-

Static.

The images vanished and the screens went black. Jenny whipped her gaze back to Mr. Time Lord. He was dressed now, fully, settling on a black, unbuttoned over-shirt and tan jacket made of soft leather.

"Hello," he said. "I'm the Doctor." In the distance, there was a hollow booming and the station trembled. "And that would be your space station blowing up." Another booming, closer and less hollow. "I'd tell you to run, but, well." He seemed to stare pointedly at the machine their benefactor was hooked into. "Rule number one of the universe: Nothing lasts forever. Not your life, not mine. Everything ends." Another explosion echoed and the station rocked more violently. "Don't worry, though. You won't be alone. You'll have all the innocent lives you ended waiting for you on the other side. And I hope they burn." He turned back to them. His eyes weren't like Dad's, whose were like supernovas of passion and rage and pain. They were like black holes, filled with power, ice, and retribution.

And then he grinned and they were back to normal, hurt, but guarded.

"As for us, on the other hand, running would probably be a magnificent idea."

And they ran.

The station continued to self-destruct, bucking and sparking from everything, so maybe running was the wrong word for it. Quickly stumbling might be better. Twice, Jenny found herself tossed to the ground. The Doctor, however, never lost his balance, not once.

Back at their exit from the garden, they found the sentinel. It had braced itself against the wall and was blocking the door.

"How the hell are we supposed to get past it?" Carlos asked, his voice back on the edge of panic.

"I'll take care of it," Charles said quietly.

"W'at do ya mean ya'll take care of it?" Marla snapped.

Charles smiled slightly. "Do you think I could function somewhere else?"

Marla opened her mouth but there weren't any words.

Charles shook his head. "It's better like this. Take care of Luanne for me." He readied his gun, let out a yell Jenny didn't even know he had and charged at the robot, firing. Immediately, it started to move, slipping as the station bucked again.

"Let's go!" the Doctor barked.

The garden was full of activity, tentacles withering back and forth. None of them, however, seemed to be paying any attention to the five of them. Once through the garden, Georgie took the lead, charging up to where his wife and daughter were.

"Come on," he said the moment the door opened to their safe area. "We're leaving." Over his shoulder, Jenny could see Luanne's arm wrapped around Susie, who was crying. The two of them staggered to him. He picked his daughter in one powerful arm and grabbed his wife with the other, and they were running again. Well, walking. By this point, the station was in disarray, literally shaking itself apart. Jenny had already heard, between shuttering booms, some of the outer rooms decompressing.

The tentacles in the market had been reduced to twitching, shaking back and forth weakly. In the hall outside the bay, the station bucked so severely, Jenny cracked her head on the ceiling. The bay itself was in shambles, even more than Jenny had remembered. She couldn't even see her shuttle.

"NO!" Marla yelled, staring in horror at a rusted and pitted freighter. "Our ship! I don't understand, w'at 'appened?"

"Excess temporal energy from the Dalek computer core was diverted here," the Doctor said. "It degraded the ships. Don't worry, we'll take mine." He hurried toward a very familiar blue box. Jenny had only seen it once, in passing, when she had destroyed the tunnel back on Messaline, but she felt as if she had known if forever. And it felt like, just maybe, it knew her too.

"Jenny, jacket," the Doctor called.

She suddenly realized she was still holding it his old frayed jacket, ever since he has thrown it to her. She balled it up and tossed it back. The Doctor caught it, fished a key out of one of the pockets, and quickly opened up the door. "Everyone, in here."

"T'ere is no way we are all gonna fit in t'ere," Marla protested.

"Just get inside," he said, waving her in. Georgie, Susie, and Luanne were first, followed by Marla, then Carlos. Jenny took two steps inside and stopped.

It was enormous. The ceiling arced above them stairs led up to a giant cylinder that was surrounded by panels that seemed thrown together from everything.

"T'is is impossible," Marla whispered.

The Doctor closed the door behind him, tossing the old jacket and his new one onto a coat rack next to it. "Yes, yes, I know, it's bigger on the inside than the outside. But that station is mere moments from completely exploding and you lot are in my way, okay?" The group melted to either side and he dashed up to the controls. "Hold onto something."

Jenny found herself grasping for anything on the wall.

The ship made the same wheeze she had heard in the darkness, after she had died that day. The floor buckled and shook as terribly as the station had been, maybe even worse. At first she thought something had gone wrong, but the Doctor was laughing, his hands flying from lever to switch to nozzle to who knew what, balanced perfectly, as if he and the ship were one.

Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The Doctor, grinning widely, leaned up against the center control panel. "We're here."

"Here," Carlos choked. "Where's here?"

The Doctor just nodded toward the door.

The sun-light outside almost blinded Jenny. She had ever seen it like that before, not real sunlight on a planet. It was warm and sandy, with tall trees with large leaves towering above them. She could hear music in the distance and people were walking alone a water line.

"W'ere are we?" Marla breathed.

"Rephis 7," the Doctor said from behind them. "A wonderful little planet, actually the second planet in the system. For some reason they started counting from the outer edge in when they discovered it." He was leaning against the door, breathing in deeply. "Just barely inside of the suitable range for a habitable planet. The equator is unbearably hot and owned by a giant mining corporation looking for rare minerals, but at the poles, it's a tropical paradise all year long, which is about a month shorter than the standard year, in case you were wondering. It's considered to be the perfect vacation planet. Okay, one of the perfect vacation planets, I believe there are about twelve of them. But after that station, I figure you deserve a vacation for the rest of your life."

"It's wonderful, Doctor," Marla said with a sad smile, "but we couldn't afford ta live 'ere."

"Sure you can." He reached back inside his ship and pulled out the old, frayed jacket. He pulled the panel out of its pocket and handed it to her. "Purple metal. There are museums and laborites that'll pay exorbitant amounts of money for a sample of that. More than enough for you, your son, your granddaughter and any other grandchildren that might show up, and their children, and maybe even their children."

Marla stared at the little purple panel then back at the Doctor, tears in her eyes. "T'ank you."

"It's nothing," he said, smiling. "You deserve it. This is a wonderful place." He paused. "There is a drink you might want to be careful about, though. Comes from a local flower. Don't let her drink it." He pointed at Susie. "She's a bit, well, okay, it's a, well." He coughed uncomfortably. "It's an aphrodisiac," he said very quickly. "You might also want to make sure you're around someone who wants that sort of attention before you drink it too."

Marla grinned, almost naughtily. "Speaking from experience, Doctor."

He actually turned red.

As the five of them, Marla, Georgie, Susie, Luanne, and Carlos, walked out toward the beach, pausing only to have of the poofy-haired natives to put a ring of flowers on their heads, Jenny stared at the Doctor.

"So," he said.

"So."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

He shrugged. "You could always travel with me," he said quickly. "The TARDIS certainly has the room."

"Or?"

"Or you could stay here, I suppose, if you really wanted too."

Jenny looked at the ground for a moment. "My dad told me that killing was a disease, that once it infected you, you could never be rid of it."

"Your dad's a smart man."

"Is that you admitting you're not him or just giving yourself a compliment?"

"The latter, I assure you."

She paused again. "No matter how evil that man was, my dad never would have left him to die. So why did you?"

The Doctor sighed. "Because I had no other choice. Jenny, to kill someone is terrible, because you not only destroy everything they could have done, but you destroy their memories, their thoughts, their dreams. But that man couldn't be allowed to keep living, because he would have just kept killing and killing and killing. And much better that I do it, my hands stained with more blood than I could ever wish, than to inflict someone else with that duty." He shook his head. "Had there been any other way, I would have taken it, but I'm not going to hesitate if it's the last option I have. Because doing that can put more people in danger."

She mulled it over for a moment. "All right, Dad, where to next?"

He grinned. "You called me Dad."

"Yes, I did."

"Well, how about this little place I like to call everywhere?"

Jenny smiled. "Sounds wonderful."

"One question first, really quick. What color is my hair?"

She blinked. "What?"

"My hair," Dad said, pointing to it. "What color is it?"

"Black."

He let out a long suffering sigh. "Why am I never ginger?" He opened the door to TARDIS. "Come on, let's go. The universe it waiting."


	7. The Epilogue

There was a sudden wrench, and time seemed to sputter, the energy flicking momentarily before flaring again.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

The energy and pain subsided and he found himself standing there, painting. His stomach twisted suddenly, causing him to double over.

Something was wrong!

He was alone, grasping to the edges of a doorway to desperately keep himself upright. He hadn't been alone, there had been others, but now…

Something tried to fog his mind, but he shook it off as another spasm shook his body, forcing him to his knees. He retched, coughing up golden energy. Sweat prickled at his eyes and his vision blurred.

Something was very wrong!

He was in a small room, maybe a box, in a bigger room. He couldn't see a door, but he had to move. It wasn't safe here, it couldn't be safe here. He tried, but his knees were too weak, causing him to stumble. Crawling, he managed to pull himself ahead, pausing as his body contorted in pain.

His vision was so distorted that he didn't even see the wall till his hand smacking into it. Walls were good, walls held doors. It was getting harder to think, the fog from earlier returning in force.

Another spasm shook his body and he vomited energy out in giant globs. His hand slid forward and hit another wall.

A corner! No, he needed a door, not a corner!

His fist beat against the corner weakly as his entire world turned black.

Voices awoke him. Voices far from the corner he was slouched in. The world seemed unfocused and numb. He couldn't move, couldn't even blink.

"…damages the DNA. Not much, but each time it stacked on more. Soon, well, you got people who lived…"

He tried to stir again.

"…found there was a trend, the same genes getting hit time after time…"

It dawned on him suddenly that the voices weren't far away, they were simply faint.

"…stop it from trying. It keeps tacking on the false genes, except now there's no…"

His ears were working no better than the rest of him. They were in the same room.

"…this place, so that you just hurry home and have beans and tea…"

What were they talking about? Couldn't they see him? He needed help.

"…only live in the present, not the future or the past. No memories, no dreams."

No, they couldn't. The thing, the box, whatever it had been, it must be blocking him from view. He tried desperately to make his voice work, to make any noise. A grunt, a whine, anything to make them notice him.

"The answers to all of your questions are, I don't know. But those cords go back out the door. I think following them might lead us to those answers."

He heard footsteps echoing as they left. He tried to strain his ears, hoping that maybe someone would spot him and double back, yelling out in concern. He was still hoping as the darkness returned.

Another wrench sent him flying, tumbling face first onto the floor. His jaw ached in protest, causing him to groan and rub it gently. He paused to study the hand. It was still weak, trembling lightly, but otherwise seemed fine. His mind was finally clear again. He was on the station.

A tremor shook the ground. He pushed himself up, coming to the conclusion that his assessment of his hand held true for his entire body. Weak but fully functional.

Again the floor shook. Climbing cautiously to his feet, he glanced around. He was in a large room, filled progenation machines. A cursory check of his memories told him nothing. However he had got here, the memory was gone now.

Moving as quickly as both his weaken state and the shutting of the station would let him, he headed out and down an unfamiliar hall. After another boom, an alarm sounded, snapping an emergency bulk head closed in front of him. Scowling in annoyance, he turned around to head back the other way.

Eventually, he found himself in a familiar room. It was the small foyer area just outside the garden, the last place he remembered, vaguely. He had been in here briefly.

In the corner, under a collapsed ceiling, there was a large machine. Underneath that, he could see the remains of a body, dead eyes staring up at him. His pace didn't falter.

In the park, the tentacles were twitching. As he reached the exit, the floor bucked hard enough to throw him several meters high in the air. He landed hard and it took him a moment to recover. Back on his feet, he pressed himself much faster than he wished too. He needed to get out of here quickly.

The tentacles in the market weren't moving at all. He slammed into one of the stalls while metal screeched. More alarms sounded. The explosions were literally ripping the station apart.

He barely got into hall before another explosion rang out. Metal groaned and the ceiling of the market was pulled into the vacuum. For a half second, he saw the ungrateful stars burning in the distance, before the emergency bulkhead snapped shut.

He hurried past a cracking window and out into the landing queue, before stopping dead.

It was gone! The worthless piece of crap had disappeared into the ether, leaving him abandoned on this ship. That had probably been the whole point, the whole reason it had dragged him here!

He heard the window in the hall shatter and the door to the queue snapped shut. In the distance, he could see the force field holding in the atmosphere was starting to fail.

Time was short.

He staggered through the ruined hulks of ships. Those that had not withered away had been crushed the other ships knocked over in the quakes of the station. His eyes fell on a shuttle, an old colonial lump, that had sunk when the platform it had been sitting on had collapsed. It, however, was still upright. He managed to get inside and close the hatch just as the field failed.

Settling down in the pilot's chair, he flipped the engines on. Without giving them much time to warm up, he pushed the throttle forward, clearing the queue moments before the stations core decided to melt down. The shuttle shuttered as they rode the shockwave clear. Glancing back at the twisted wreck that had been the station, he sniffed disdainfully.

He was stuck, not just in this worthless piece of junk, but in this worthless time. He glowered ahead. It would be possible to track down another means of travel. His best bet was probably a vortex manipulator. A terrible way to travel, but it was something. Tracking one down during this time period would be a challenge though. Humans had swung back from wanting to explore time to exploring new uninhabited sections of the universe, each more toxic than the one before. Conquering them seemed to appeal to their barbaric sense of accomplishment.

He punched in the coordinates of a likely location of another station. He could move from there.

He caught his reflection in a silver screen and paused to admire himself. A strong nose this time, regal even, and a square chin. He smiled.

"What do you know, I'm finally ginger."


End file.
